Speech studied for clues to autism
Who: Nirit Brosh, pediatrician in Givat-Ada, Israel and a clinical fellow in the University of Toronto’s two-year training program in developmental pediatrics at Bloorview.
What: Partnering with Bloorview postdoctoral researcher Tiago Falk to create a measure of children’s speech prosody through voice analysis that will identify toddlers likely to develop autism. Researchers will compare recordings of two groups of children aged 18 and 24 months old. One group in each category eventually received an autism diagnosis. “We will acoustically analyze different elements of pitch and vocal quality and have reason to believe, based on studies in older children, that we’ll find a quantifiable difference in the vocalizations of toddlers with autism,” Nirit says.
Why: “Most tools for assessing vocalizations typical of autism are subjective and this will give us an objective measure. My hope is that this software will eventually be available in any developmental pediatrician’s office to help identify children with autism – and get them intervention – as early as possible.
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